Written by: Oliver Heffron

Like bears crawling from their winter dens, society is going outside again. Hello World, the inaugural gallery show from Pietro Alexander and Sasha Filimonov’s Spy Projects, celebrates this time of renewal and transition with an impressive exhibition of talent, technique, and purpose from a group of exciting young artists.

Featuring a diverse selection of beautiful and unique pieces from the tantalizing oil portrait “Selma, 2019” from Hannah Lupton Reinhard to the interactive wooden sculpture “Alphabet Box, 2021,” from Max Hertz, Hello World exhibits a vast array of techniques and mediums from a talented group of recent graduates from the Road Island School of Design (and James McBride from Bennington). The artistic space incorporates a litany of different forms and perspectives, from Mia Scarpa’s “Sw33t Caroline, 2020,” which intricately synthesizes an uncanny nostalgia with electric blue and cartoons to James McBride’s “Amerikan Rag, 2020,” which manifests the uneven contours of American identity with a collage of latex paint, advertisements, graphite and caulk on a drop cloth. With the massive 8’ x 7.5’ “Front, 2019,” Sasha Filimonov utilizes wooden panels to carve the looming cultural memory of militant heroism into an impressive tableau, while Jaxon Demme’s mountainous squad of sculptures infantilize the eye with their joyful colors and individualized physical characteristics. Pastel flames and circular rhythms emit from Calliope Pavlide’s “Hypnosis, 2020,” while Carley Gmitro’s “Feel Amazing Today, 2020,” charts the divided contemporary self through diagrammatic collaging and internet imagery. Each piece overflows with the effort and experience of each unique artist, while their combination in the space manifests the group’s energetic entrance into art’s dialectical conversation with the current culture.

In a recent interview with The Nuance, Pietro Alexander explained how the ideas of transition and endings influenced the show’s production: “The concept behind it, it kind of goes with the name, is that we’re all starting again, it’s something to inaugurate the end of the pandemic, the end of school for us, and all those sorts of different endings.” Meeting during college in Providence while studying at Brown and the Road Island School of Design, respectively, Alexander and Filimonov set out to create a gallery that brought attention to talented artists and consciously contemplated the contradictions of American society and its identity within the world’s cultural manufacturing process. “There’s a lot to explore within the intersection between American cultural hegemony and the marginalized,” Alexander said about the gallery’s focus. With a successful opening on June 5 that featured a larger crowd than expected, “Hello World” marks the duo’s first gallery opening and a professional coming-out party for the show’s talented batch of artists.

With this combination of purpose, talent, and focus, Spy Projects makes a strong introduction to the Los Angeles gallery scene with “Hello World” and offers a space for escape and contemplation as the world rushes to spin again. “That’s sort of my own, personal goal for the gallery,” Alexander said, “that somebody to come in who doesn’t normally experience art or and they see it as a space different from the world around. I want that base, intimate, sensory reaction. Obviously, I want people to think, but there’s no thought without engaging someone’s core emotions first.” So if you’re in Los Angeles and want to feel something, take a visit to “Hello World,” the show is open until June 28, on view Tuesdays through Saturdays from 12-4 pm at 3709 West Jefferson Ave, Los Angeles. More information on the show can be found here.